The last 18 months have been characterised by profound change & uncertainty for those worst affected by COVID-19. Today, we're launching a research comic that shares people's first-hand experience of claiming benefits during the pandemic: Pls RT 🙏📢🙏

New paper from our project: ‘Welfare attitudes in a crisis: How COVID exceptionalism undermined greater solidarity’ in ⁦@JSP_Journal⁩

RT @daniel_edmiston: So the @DistantWelfare @kateesummers team used new data to unpack this in an @IPPR article and found that a clear majo….

RT @C_Fitz_: 📢📢We are launching 📢📢.*Social Security Soundings* today. It's a website that features 18 women discussing the question "What i….

RT @InequalitiesBlg: Should we talk about 'social security' instead of 'welfare'? Some new evidence

RT @JCeoltaSmith: @long_covid @martinmckee Yes coproduced research but need to remove barriers for people eg with #LongCovid in receipt of….

RT @ConversationUK: "People often think that benefit levels are related to meeting some level of minimum need, but this is not the case. Th….

RT @kateesummers: With the political landscape changing at a dizzying speed, @daniel_edmiston and I have tried to give a slightly wider vie….

RT @UoS_HealthSoc: Congratulations to @lisa_scullion and the @DistantWelfare team, who have been shortlisted in this year's @timeshighered….

RT @DistantWelfare: For a detailed account of the barriers that people with learning disabilities face in the benefits system, read @NeilCa….

For a detailed account of the barriers that people with learning disabilities face in the benefits system, read @NeilCarpenter14 's new book Benefits on Trial - a short summary at and you can find the book at

Are you interested in analysing new survey data on benefits claimants 2020-2022? . Then look at the new Welfare at a (Social) Distance data deposit - more info at

RT @kateesummers: Our @DistantWelfare comic was turned into a #LSEFestival short 🎬📽️. Focusing on lessons we can take forward from social s….

Digital exclusion is creating a ‘two-tier’ system for people claiming benefits

RT @Liz_K_Clery: 4)But single parents do not feel they are provided with tailored support that takes account of the unique combination of c….

We argue that those *worst* served by existing provision need to be more effectively & systematically integrated into our examination of social security policy if we are to fully understand its diverse (dis)functions, the public agendas it serves & the citizen-subjects it fails.

By attending to wider ecosystems of support, this paper highlights the considerable numbers (particularly BAME local residents and those with @NRPFNetwork) seeking access to financial assistance but currently excluded from, or on the periphery of, the benefits system.

This is because local ecosystems of support can soften the edges of welfare reform, but displaced discretion alongside local resource pressures mean support actors can also become "enforcers" as much as "mediators" of state-citizen dynamics.

In our study, claimants with the most complex needs were also those worst affected by the withdrawal of services or face-to-face support and stand to lose out most from plans for further digitalisation and welfare reform.

What does this mean for understanding the governance of UK social security? Well, there are inherent challenges to assessing the impact of the considerable remedial and intermediary work undertaken locally—both when this ‘succeeds’ and when it ‘fails’. .

Local actors are being tasked with new roles within social security, at the same time as their capacity to fulfil these is being hollowed out. Such developments are introducing new dynamics & discretionary practice, shaping how social security is claimed, received & by whom.